"The New England conscience does not stop you from doing what you shouldn't-it just stops you from enjoying it."

"As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human kind."

"There are three terrible ages of childhood - 1 to 10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30."

"A "good" family, it seems, is one that used to be better."

"The facts of life are very stubborn things."

"The opera is like a husband with a foreign title - expensive to support, hard to understand and therefore a supreme social challenge."